Apparatus for making stretch and bulked yarn



y 23, 1967 SHIGERO KANEKO ET AL 3,320,648

APPARATUS FOR MAKING STRETCH AND BULKED YARN Filed Jan. 6, 1965 3 Sheets-Sheet 1 INVENTORS Saw/520 Kan/514a Pros/1K0 Kola/5M0 y 1967 smesno' KANEKO ET AL 3,320,648

APPARATUS FOR MAKING STRETCH AND BULKF D YARN Filed Jan. (5, 1965 5 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTORS 6/4/6620 KANE/(o Prosnku Imus/ea BY MIA/70,00 Kala/460K! y 1967 SHIGERO KANEKO T AL APPARATUS FOR MAKING STRETCH AND BULKFLD YARN Filed Jan. (3, 1965 5 Sheets-Sheet 3 INVENTORS 6/4/6520 Kama/(o vosmeu Kan/5K0 BY kcumeo Kan/A5010 HITYS.

United States Patent 3,320,648 APPARATUS FOR MAKING STRETCH AND BULKED YARN Shigero Kaneko, 218 Aioidori, Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan;

Ryosaku Kaneko, 8-57 Tanabe-Honmachi, Higashisumiyoshi-iru, Osaka, Japan; and Kentaro Kawasaki,

393 Sakurai, Minoo-shi, Osaka-Eu, Japan Filed Jan. 6, 1965, Ser. No. 423,778 6 Claims. (Cl. 281) This invention relates to the making of stretchable bulky yarn and particularly to improvements in and relating to the so-called edge-crimping process, in which thermoplastic synthetic fiber yarn is Wound under tension about an edged blade one or more turns and drawn to be scraped by the blade and thus crimped to form a stretchable bulky yarn.

The edge-crimping of thermoplastic synthetic fiber yarn can be performed in various known ways. In one way, the yarn is turned about its axis while being scraped by the edged blade, as disclosed, for example, in Japanese patent publication No. 8,867/195-5. In another way, the yarn in a partially thermoplasticized state is crimped by passing along a V-shaped path over the edged blade, as disclosed in Japanese patent publication No. 1,700/ 1958. In Japanese patent publication No. 11,499/ 1960, the inventors of the present application have proposed a procedure in which the yarn is scraped by passing between a pair of opposing saw blades which are positively driven to tremble. Also, in Japanese patent publication No. 11,272/ 1962, the inventors have proposed another procedure which employs a pyramidal element about which yarn is wound and which is freely suspended, for example, by a spring so as to tremble as the yarn is drawn to be scraped by the element.

The present invention has for its object to provide an improved method of and apparatus for making crimped yarn by such so-called scraping and has been accomplished upon the basis of a number of experimental researches made on the different previous procedures and apparatus described above and by incorporating various improvements and devices therein.

The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a plan view of one form of blade device usable according to the present invention;

FIGS. 2 and 3 are cross-sectional views of the device taken along the lines IIII and III-III, respectively, in FIG. 1;

FIGS. 4 and 5 are perspective views illustrating respective modifications of the device shown in FIGS. 1 to 3;

FIG. 6 is a schematic illustration of the process according to the present invention;

FIGS. 7A, 7B, 7C, 7D and 7B illustrate respective practical arrangements in the present invention; and

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating the angular relation of the yarn being scraped and the edged blades in the present invention.

Referring to the drawings and particularly to FIGS. 1 to 3, reference characters S and S indicate a raw yarn and an edge-crimped product yarn respectively. Reference characters 1 and 1a indicate a pair of edged blades each having an elongated triangular cross section and secured to the top surface of a base 2 by threaded screws 4 and 4a, respectively. An electric or other heater element 3 is incorporated in the base 2, as illustrated. One of the edged blades 1 is fitted with an adjuster arm 6 to facilitate the adjustment of the angle of inclination 0 of the edge line A of the blade to the direction of travel of the yarn.

3,329,648 Patented May 23, 1967 The top surface of the base 2 is formed with an elongated slot 7 to allow the screw 4a, holding the other edged blade 1a, to be varied in position thereby to adjust the distance between the two edged blades 1 and 1a.

The raw yarn S is wound one or more turns about the edged blades 1 and 1a, as shown, and is drawn under a definite tension by a tension or draft device, for example, including two pairs of rollers 13 and 15, as shown in FIG. 6, to be scraped by the blades and subsequently taken up as a processed yarn 5. With this arrangement, the edged blades 1 and 1a, each taking the form of a thin flattened cantilever supported at one end thereof, are each caused to tremble or vibrate minutely at its characteristic frequency by the tension and frictional drag of the travelling yarn being scraped.

It will be evident that when the vibrating blade 1 or 1a is moving in a direction opposite to the direction of travel of the ymn that the yarn is scraped more strongly than when the blade is on the opposite swing of its vibration and is moving in the same direction as the direction of travel of the yarn. The yarn is thus alternately scraped or worked non-uniformly along the side being scraped by each bar thereby enhancing crimping. The vibration of the blades also apparently serves to prevent occurrence of any temporary extraordinary yarn tension otherwise possible during the scraping and the resuilting yarn breakage. It is desirable to incline the yarn-engaging edge A of the first blade 1 at an appropriate angle to the edge B of the second blade 1a. By doing this, the portions of the travelling yarn S are kept from overlapping each other and held in respective stabilized positions under tension, as shown. Where the yarn is wound about the edged blades 1 and In so as to define an S-shaped path, as clearly shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the yarn is scraped successively along its surfaces lying substantially opposite to each other with respect to the yarn axis. Together with the above stabilizing effect, this enables the yarn to be scraped uniformly over its entire peripheral surface. Moreover, the inclination to each other of the edge lines A and B of the two edged blades 1 and 1a means that the line of contact of the yarn S with the blades extends along the peripheral surface of the yarn defining a gently curved helix about the axis of the yarn. It will be understood, therefore, that, where the yarn is monofilament, it undergoes deformation substantially uniform over its entire peripheral surface by the scraping action and, where the yarn is multifilament, the component filaments are all deformed substantially uniformly. This apparently results in a bulky yarn crimped in three dimensions involving no crimping irregularities. In addition, according to the procedure, the slight initial twist of the raw yarn, usually given during its preparation and commonly of the order of 20 to 40 turns per meter, is effectively kept from being accumulated on the edged blade during scraping. This effect is safely expected to be at least equivalent to that obtainable according to invention disclosed in Japanese patent publication No. 8,867/ 1955. Moreover, the minute vibration of the edged blades 1 and 1a caused by the travelling of the yarn wound about the blades causes the point of contact of the yarn with each of the blades to be shifted to and fro along its edge so that the edged blades are eifectively kept from being locally worn to become dull or grooved. These features of the present invention make it advantageous over any previous edgecrimping method or apparatus therefor.

FIGS. 4 and 5 illustrate respective modifications of the device shown in FIGS. 1 to 3, in both of which two edged blades 1 and 1a together form an integral U-shaped element and, as illustrated, have respective edge lines A and B inclined to each other at a fixed angle. By properly selecting the width, thickness and other conditions for the two edged blades 1 and 1a, they can readily be made to vibrate under the effect of the yarn being scraped by the blades and maintain such resonant state during operation. Either of the modifications shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 is thus particularly suitable for processing thick yarn whereas the procedure of Japanese patent publication No. 11,272/ 1962, referred to hereinbefore, can hardly be employed to give satisfactory results with thick yarn, which necessarily involves high tension.

Referring next to FIG. 6, which schematically illustrates the entire process according to the present invention, raw yarn S from spool 11 is led continuously in a steady state through a constant tension device 12 and a wettening device 24 and further fed by a pair of feed rollers 13. Appropriate ratios of surface velocities between the pairs of feed and pull rollers 13 and be tween the two pairs of pull rollers 15' and 15" and between 15" and 15 enable the yarn to proceed under a definite tension while being preheated by a heater 14 and, where the heat shrinkage of the yarn is high, it is overfed during its travel through the pairs of rollers.

The yarn S thus thermo-plasticized is wound about edged blades 1,111, 1', 1a, 1" and 1"a and, as it is drawn, it is scraped by the blades and crimped. The yarn S processed is delivered to the take-up roller 16 under the pull of rollers 15, 15' and 15" while being cooled or left to cool and is thus wound up on the roller 16 as a product. In this process, the preheater 14 may be omitted in case a heater 3 is incorporated in the base 2, on which the edged blades are mounted, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The tension or draft applied to the yarn running between pairs of rollers 13, 15 15" and 15, the temperature of the heater 14 and edged blades 1, 1a, 1', 1'01, 1' and 1"a, the number of turns of the yarn S about the edged blades, the winding tension between the pull and take-up rollers 15 and 7, and the winding velocity, are variable depending upon the material and size of the yarn, the denier of the component filaments and the degree of crimp required of the finished yarn. Also, the sharpness or the edge angle of the edged blades scraping the yarn has a large influence upon the degree of crimp obtainable with the yarn.

FIGS. 7A, 7B, 7C, 7D and 7B illustrate different arrangements of a number of pairs of edged blades 1 and 1a about which yarn to be scraped is wound successively. In FIG. 7A the relative arrangement of feed and pull rollers 13 and 15 is the same as that shown in FIG. 6 but in FIG. 7B pairs of guide rollers 21 and 22 are interposed between the adjacent pairs of edged blades I-II and II-III. FIGS. 7C, 7D and 7B illustrate different relative arrangements of the pairs of edged blades. In each of these arrangements, the pairs of edged blades may be the same or different from each other in shape and material.

FIG; 8 illustrates the manner in which the angles of approach and departure alpha and beta of the yarn relative to the edge line A of the element 1-1a can be controlled by varying the angle of inclination of the element to the direction of travel of the yarn being scraped by the element. In FIG. 8, the blade element has a longitudinal axis 0 extending substantially at right angles to the sheet and a transverse axis b--b and is rotatable about the axis 0 and also bodily movable in a vertical direction relative to the path of travel of the yarn S. In these manners, the angles of approach and departure alpha and beta of the yarn can be readily adjusted to meet the particular conditions of the edge-crimping operation. This apparently forms a further important advantage of the present invention. In FIGS. 7A and 7B, u 0 and fl 180. Only in FIG. 7B, pairs of draft rollers 20, 21, 22 and 23 are each interposed between the adjacent blade elements for the purpose of varying the rate of draft therebetween. In FIG. 7C a': ,8 90, in FIG. 7D oc= fl 90, and in FIG. 7B u 90 and B 90. With these arrangements, including a plurality of blade elements 1-1a, it is to be noted that the number of turns of the yarn S wound about the blade elements 11a, the rate of draft or, in some cases, of overfeed between the adjacent blade elements, and the angles of approach and departure of the yarn are not necessarily required to be the same for all of the blade elements used.

To obtain a satisfactory crimping effect in the process of the present invention, employing a pair or pairs of edged blades, it is generally desirable to scrape the yarn while it is in a preheated thermoplasticized state or in a softened state as obtainable by pretreatment of the yarn with a liquid swelling agent which is weak enough not to impair the yarn quality. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present'invention may be employed in combination with any of other crimping methods, such as the well known one including heating, heat treatment and untwisting and the stuffing method, for the purpose of producing a further improved crimped yarn or a yarn crimped to specialized effect.

In general, it is highly desirable to perform the crimping process upon the yarn after it has been immersed in or wetted in or with a liquid selected from the group including water, a soap solution and a mixture of water and a surface active agent to achieve a swelling effect asabove stated and including a static preventive and/ or a smoothing agent. Particularly for nylon yarn, these include water, alcohol, solutions of inorganic salts such as ZnCl and dilute phenol solutions. Since any electrostatic charge otherwise occurring when the yarn is scraped by the edged blade can be effectively prevented. Also, the wettening effect of the liquid serves not only to bind the yarn but also lubricate it to allow its smooth travel with no stick or slip involved, thus ensuring production of a uniformly crimped yarn.

In processing nylon yarn, the moisture acts to promote the plasticization of the yarn enabling it to be scraped.

while held in a state as it were steamed by a preheater. This means that the nylon yarn can be crimped with satisfactory uniformity by use of edged blades held at a relatively low temperature.

Working conditions employed in a few experiments conducted in practicing the present invention are listed below. The apparatus used included three pairs of edged blades 1 and 1a, arranged as shown in FIG. 6 and each formed as shown in FIG. 1. The yarn S to be scraped was wound one turn about each of the blades.

Experiment I Experiment II Raw yarn, 6 nylon 840 d (136 f) 210 d (34 f). Blade temperature 1. 22 200 C. Yarn temperature when scraped- 2. ab. 17 0 C Preheatcr temperature 15 C. Draft i0 -1 i0. Processing speed 20 m./min 40 m./n1in.

The finished yarn was hanked, then relaxed by dipping in a bath of warm water held at 60 C. for 30 minutes, air-dried and subsequently measured to give the following crimp characteristics:

Example I Example II Stretch, percent Restoration, percent The stretch and recovery percentages were calculated from the following formulae:

Stretch, percent 100 Recovery, percent =Z 100 where a represents the length of the sample yarn measured under the initial load of 1 mg./d., b represents the length measured after the loading of 100' mg./d. for 30 seconds, and c represents the length measured after the unloading and one minute of the reloading of initial 1 mg./d. The initial length of the sample yarn was approximately 50 cm.

It will be appreciated that the present invention has made it possible for the first time to produce crimped yarn uniform and excellent in quality on an industrial scale and economically with limited installation cost.

The present invention can be applied to different yarn materials including polyamides, polyesters, polyacryls, polyvinyl chloride, vinylidine chloride copolymers, polyolefins, polyvinyl acetate and other vinyl alcoholic fibers.

Although a number of embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated and described, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention or from the scope of the appended claims.

What is claimed is:

1. An apparatus for making crimped yarn comprising two edged blades each of triangular cross section, the apeXes of the triangular sections defining crimping edges inclined out of parallel and at an angle to each other, said edged blades being solidly fixed as a cantilever, and means to draw yarn wound about the blades under tension in a continuous manner so as to vibrate the blades under the yarn tension and friction against the blades.

2. An apparatus according to claim 1 wherein the angle of approach and the angle of departure of the yarn from 6 the crimping edge is adjusted between about zero and about degrees.

3. An apparatus designed to edge-crimp thermoplastic synthetic yarn which includes the combination of two edged blades, each of triangular cross section, and means to continuously draw the yarn over said blades in a figure eight pattern so as to vibrate said blades, said vibration causing said yarn to be alternately lightly and heavily scraped by said blades to effect crimping of the yarn. 4. An apparatus designed to edge-crimp raw yarn which includes the combination of two edged blades, inclined at an angle to each other, means to selectively vary the spaced and angular relation of said blades to each other, and means to continuously draw said yarn over said blades in such a manner as to vibrate said blades, said vibration causing said yarn to be scraped by said blades. 5. Apparatus for making crimped yarn including means for passing the yarn in a path, means for controllably tensioning the yarn, means for controllably lubricating the yarn, a blade having a V-shaped edge about which the yarn is pulled in said path to eifect vibration of the blade, a cantilever support for one end of the blade, the blade being of a selected length to vibrate at the characteristic frequency of the length.

6. Apparatus as defined in claim 4 wherein means are provided to heat the blades to a selected temperature.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,022,854 12/ 1935 Greenwood 28-72 3,025,584 3/1962 Evans 281 3,154,835 11/1964 Palma et a1. 28-72 3,175,348 3/1965 Bloch 28 1 FOREIGN PATENTS 1,272,297 4/1961 France.

MERVIN STEIN, Primary Examiner.

L. K. RIMRODT, Assistant Examiner. 

1. AN APPARATUS FOR MAKING CRIMPED YARN COMPRISING TWO EDGED BLADES EACH OF TRANGULAR CROSS SECTION, THE APEXES OF THE TRANGULAR SECTIONS DEFINING CRIMPING EDGES INCLINED OUT OF PARRALLEL AND AT AN ANGLE TO EACH OTHER, SAID EDGED BLADES BEING SOLIDLY FIXED AS A CANTILEVER, AND MEANS TO DRAW YARN WOUND ABOUT THE BLADES UNDER TENSION IN A CONTINUOUS MANNER SO AS TO VIBRATE THE BLADES UNDER THE YARN TENSION AND FRICTION AGAINST THE BLADES. 